Albert Schweitzer: Bach, “Little” Fugue in G Minor

Another of Albert Schweitzer’s recordings from the 1930s (see also the Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor). This is a short fugue that takes up one side of a 12-inch record. Once again, we have the pleasure of hearing a real organist play unedited. You will hear wrong notes and hesitations, as you would when any real organist sat down to play an organ; there was no editing, other than to do the side over if things went far enough wrong. In spite of the slight surface noise, these unedited performances seem more like the experience of hearing a musician play the organ than our best modern recordings do, with their hundreds of little edits aiming for an artificial perfection.